The Borgias Review: Wedding Spells

Although "Lucrezia's Wedding" was the second straight episode in which The Borgias failed to prove itself as an excellent series, there continue to be a couple of interesting elements that give the show promise as we get into the heart of its first season.

The first is François Arnaud. His Cesare Borgia is really the only intriguing character up to this point in the series. Equal parts compassionate and conniving, everything he does immediately becomes interesting, especially as he surprised everyone by bringing Vanozza to the wedding party. Sure he was doing it to make his mother and sister happy, but he also knew that it was going to ruffle some feathers, and I like that about him.

And ruffle some feathers it did, which is the other element of promise. They are doing a commendable job at attempting to create interesting long-running plots. So far, some of them have missed and some of them have kind of hit, but at least they're making the effort. Take for example this idea of Vanozza's past as a whore. It caused Rodrigo to disallow her from the wedding, which led to that one guy making a scene at the party, and eventually led to Lucrezia getting scolded and raped by her new husband. Read More...